February 1, 2009
-
My grandma, who I have mentioned on occasion in my blog, passed away last week at the age of 103. She died peacefully in her sleep, after having been on hospice care now for several months. I still am in awe of the things that have happened, and what she had been through in her life time. She was alive for the first flight of a plane, saw the first man walk on the moon, and then saw the space shuttle and finally tourists paying to fly into space.
She was a young married woman at the depth of the Great Depression and traveled with my grandfather from Iowa to California with all their earthly belongings in their car, with their two older children, not even sure what work my grandfather would do once they arrived. In Iowa, he had been a shoe salesman in the family store.
She was born very premature, and if the stories are to be believed, she was only 2-1/2 pounds at birth. She was kept in a box which sat on the open oven door to keep her warm. She survived diptheria as a teenager, when her parents were dirt poor and could hardly find the money to have a doctor come and see her. He declared she could only be cured by drinking pineapple juice which was terribly exotic and expensive in America at that time. Her parents bought cases of canned pineapple and she drank the juice it was canned in and somehow survived. Was it the juice? Good luck? Who knows, but she recovered.
She saved money by sewing all the clothing for the family, including my mother's underwear. I can't tell you the number of times I heard the story about how Grandma didn't take shrinkage into account when doing the elastic, so mom would die once her panties had been washed a few times and cut off the circulation in her legs. But they made do.
Grandma was an amazing baker.. She would lay out clean newspaper and pour unmeasured scoops of flour, sugar, etc. until it looked right. Mix it up and make the most wonderful angle food cake. No one could every figure out the recipe, despite many attempts, since there was no way to measure the quantities she was using.
Her last few months have been a bit hard, small strokes, hallucinations at times, weakness, not good quality of life. So I am glad she passed away gently and the pain and confusion was not long and drawn out. Good bye Grandma, rest in peace.
Comments (4)
Beth actually has the recipe for the angel food cake. She had Mother make it one day. Every time Mother would scoop out an ingredient, Beth would measure it. In that way she managed to get an acurate receipe. Beth makes an angel food cake from the recipe fairly often. I also have Mother's molasses cookie recipe. I figurered it out, by checking cookbooks for similar recipes and compairing them to Mother's "helpful" information. It took a number of attempts, before I was able to duplicate the cookies I loved from childhood.
You have written a very touching account of Mother's life. I know she is at peace now.
Hugs, Mom
She sounds like a lovely woman. 103... that's a lotta years to get through. Pretty amazing, actually.
That's how my grandmother baked too! She sounds like she was a very fascinating lady!
Sounds like she had a wonderful life even with its ups and downs it was full and she made it to 103. WOW!! My great grandmother died at 96 2 summers ago and she had one of those kinds of life. Surrounded by family who loved her. Sounds like you loved your grandmother very much. {{{hugs}}}
Comments are closed.